Getting To Ten

There is something magical about the number 10. Long touted as the mystical percentage when tithing or the ideal amount to save for attaining financial freedom, it is also made up of the two numbers 1 and 0, which are the basis of binary code, the language of computers, and the digital world we are living in. It’s also a great number when multiplying and dividing as it's easy to understand how all those zeroes appear and disappear. Thank you, ancient mathematicians, for discovering these miraculous numbers.

We also associate ten with it with some ideal of perfection. A ten is a perfect score. A perfect look. A perfect meal. A perfect vacation. A perfect song. A perfect film. A perfect ZOOM call we had with our granddaughter who just turned 10 years old. When we give each other a high five it comes out to a ten, and we resonate with the idea of perfection even if fleeting in a less-than-perfect world. And that reminds us of all the times we aspired to achieve a ten or be a ten and haven’t quite gotten there.

Perhaps our efforts were insufficient, our awareness of what we aspired to be flawed, our support system weak, or our intention misinformed. Then we get flooded with those thought forms streaming directly from our egoic mind or our childhood conditioning that tell us that life is not easy, we must struggle to get what we want, and as the Rolling Stones’ song reminded us we can’t always get what we want.

Back to reality. I’m on the treadmill of life, literally and metaphorically. My fitness trainer is standing over me and telling me to keep going. Three more deadlifts, ten more pushups, five more squats. One step after another, have a goal, don’t quit. Never say never. Because it's not only the intention to get there, it is the effort to stay in the game. And the benefit accrues in the challenge undertaken, so that those last few strokes on that rowing machine, those last five minutes on the elliptical when you thought you couldn’t go one more step or take one more breath is the thing to go for and as one pushes the breath in and out and the heart races and the sweat pours out of us our urge to quit yells at us to stop, guess what? We don’t. We keep going. We listen to that voice in our hearts that says stay the course, get stronger, be better, you can do it.

Because when we do that, we push past the no to the yes. Which brings us closer to that perfect ten. And when we’ve done enough and worked enough and felt that sense of being in the zone we can take a break and sit back and remember all the things we might have done and could still do and all the times we didn’t quite get there but so what? We get up and we do it again and again and again.

And so our lives go on and we understand more about the world around us and who we are and why we are here. As Joni Mitchell noted in The Circle Game we keep going round and round and up and down and dreams become new dreams as we come around. And those circles and cycles make us grateful to experience our lives and the lives of those around us, letting our light shine through to guide us on our path to perfection. Yes E = mc2, but then there is that mysterious essence that makes all of this possible which we call Love and God and higher consciousness. It’s s always around and within us, keeping us wrapped in love and joy and peace as we strive for that perfect ten, knowing we are one with all sentient beings and with Spirit.